ABSTRACT
The Geneva-registered International Baccalaureate Office (IBO) celebrated its fortieth anniversary in October 2008. The International Baccalaureate (IB) now conceivably forms a continuum of international education for 3-19-yearolds; the initial Diploma Programme (DP) was joined in 1994 by the Middle Years Programme (MYP), and three years later by the Primary Years Pro - gramme (PYP). The year 2010 began with the IB involving a very diverse body of 2,800 schools in 138 countries worldwide offering a combination of 3,400 programmes to 800,000 children. The IB, with its philosophical foun - da tion of ‘liberal education for human rationality’ (see Sobulis 2005), has undeniably been central to the development of international schooling in prac - tice. It is argued that the IB is overtly international at the content level but thoroughly ‘western’ at the epistemological level (see Van Oord 2007).
